Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has launched the nation’s
first undergraduate degree program devoted to the emerging
interdisciplinary field of Web Science. The new academic major
expands the current Information Technology degree program to
create both a bachelor’s degree, and a master’s concentration,
in “Information Technology and Web Science.” The students in
the interdisciplinary degree program will investigate issues on
the Web related to security, trust, privacy, content value, and
the development of the Web of the future.

“With these new degree programs, students and researchers
here at Rensselaer will help to usher in a new era of
understanding and study of the Web from its social and economic
impacts to the evolution of data and the development of new
Web-based artificial intelligence,” said Rensselaer President
Shirley Ann Jackson. “Led by professors within our Tetherless
World Research Constellation, including one of the inventors of
the Semantic Web, James Hendler, as well as a team of
interdisciplinary scientists and engineers from across our
campus, this new program in Web Science will allow Rensselaer
students to once again lead the way in an emerging area of
scientific discovery.”

The new programs will have a strong foundation in
information technology with course work and research in
computer science and programming as well as information
management. However, they will also extend well beyond most
traditional information technology curriculums and their
traditional focus solely on the technical details in building
Web applications, according to Hendler, who also
serves as the assistant dean in charge of the Information
Technology and Web Science program.

“The World Wide Web has drastically changed the way we live
our lives, process data, and even make scientific discoveries.
Despite this, we know very little about the overall structure
and evolution of the Web,” Hendler said. “Through
interdisciplinary study, students at Rensselaer will be among
the first in the world to specifically explore the interactions
between the complex technical, engineering, and social aspects
of the Web. This will be bringing new and important
perspectives on the most transformative technology in their
world to their research and careers following graduation.”

“Rensselaer has been a strong proponent of this emerging
interdisciplinary field of Web Science, and I congratulate them
on creating this program,” said Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Professor Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World
Wide Web and head of the United Kingdom’s recently announced
$45 million Web Science Institute.

“We congratulate Rensselaer on creating an undergraduate Web
Science program,” said Professor Dame Wendy Hall of Southampton
University, president of the Association for Computing
Machinery and trustee of the new Web Science Trust in the
United Kingdom. “Rensselaer has been a strong contributor to
the Web Science Trust’s curriculum efforts and is world-leading
in this area. We look forward to the possibility of creating
joint international programs between Rensselaer and the
University of Southampton’s Doctoral Training Center in Web
Science.”

The degree programs will include faculty from computer
science, management, cognitive science, and the humanities, as
well as faculty from the Tetherless
World Research Constellation. The constellation comprises
faculty who mentor up-and-coming faculty and graduate and
undergraduate students in fields ranging from computer science
to informatics. Their collective research and teaching efforts
center on new ways to understand and harness the inner workings
of the Web.

Students graduating on May 29, 2010, will be the first
students to receive the new degrees.